Speech ( سخن )

When voices failed to reach each other
And at every corner
The scent of rue and pleas
Wove through the passing crowd
Words of unrest
Relentless
Collapsed onto the earth

When the ominous heights of empty homes
Cast their shadows on weary streets
And the nakedness of loneliness
Screamed in the city's crowd
No rain would fall
To unveil the hidden violence
To cleanse the piled-up drains
Of their reeking stench
And let them surge
In a torrent’s release

Neither hell nor purgatory is this
Nor Ferdowsi’s lure
Where countless heads were lost
And the cost of naive faith
Was the wilting of the anemone’s buds

A blend of dust and opium
Wrath and blood
And the monstrous shadow of madness
That strides slowly at every edge
To frame a grand deceit
In the illusion of cardboard dreams

Yet, something still breathes in us
As unyielding as the bones of all who have gone
Rejecting the stench of decay
Drawing life from one soul to another
To persist
And to utter words anew

Arsalan – Tehran
November 15, 2024